For software developers building on Azure in 2025, Azure for Developers – Third Edition by Kamil Mrzygłód is one of the most practical, up-to-date guides available. Instead of presenting Azure as an overwhelming catalogue of services, it walks you through how to actually use those services, end to end, from setting up your environment to deploying AI-driven apps in production.
From Setup to CI/CD: Getting the Basics Right
The book begins with Part 1, covering environment setup—CLI, VS Code integration, authentication (Managed Identity, service principals), and local emulators like Azurite and Functions Core Tools. It treats setup as a skill rather than an afterthought, which pays off when the book moves into automation and deployment.
Part 2 digs into developer workflows with Azure CLI vs. PowerShell and how they fit into CI/CD pipelines in GitHub Actions, Azure DevOps, or Jenkins. The focus on automation is practical: Mrzygłód shows how to handle authentication securely, manage extensions, and keep pipelines maintainable.
Serverless, Containers, and Beyond
From there, the book widens its scope. It covers Azure Functions (including Durable Functions), Logic Apps, and App Services, giving developers hands-on examples for event-driven and serverless architectures.
The Durable Functions chapter was a standout: instead of a dry overview, Mrzygłód demonstrates orchestrator and activity functions in practice, showing how to chain tasks and manage retries. He also highlights real-world gotchas, such as replay behavior in orchestrators and state management—details that save hours of debugging in actual projects. For developers who’ve only touched “regular” Azure Functions, this chapter alone is worth the time.
The containerization chapter explains how to use Azure Container Apps, AKS (Kubernetes), and registries, grounding abstract orchestration concepts in working deployments.
Data, Observability, and AI Integration
On the data side, the book walks through Azure SQL and storage accounts, with clear examples on provisioning, scaling, and securing databases for app backends. Observability is addressed with Application Insights and logging setups—an area many developer guides skip, but which makes a huge difference in production readiness.
One of the strongest sections is the coverage of AI and machine learning: integrating OpenAI APIs, Cognitive Services, and custom ML models into applications. This makes the book not just about “classic” cloud services but also about where Azure is heading—AI-enhanced workflows and intelligent apps.
Strengths
- Practical orientation: Commands, code snippets, and deployment walkthroughs translate directly into real-world skills.
- Wide coverage: From serverless to containers, data to AI—developers get a broad toolkit.
- Developer-first tone: Clear, hands-on, and approachable, without drowning in theory.
Weaknesses
- Breadth over depth: Advanced architecture patterns, cost optimization, and performance tuning are touched lightly.
- Heavy at times: The density of commands and setup steps may overwhelm newcomers.
- Architect audience: Senior cloud architects may find it more of a refresher than a deep dive.
Final Verdict
Azure for Developers – Third Edition is best seen as a practical handbook for mid-level developers and cloud engineers. It’s strongest when walking through the nuts and bolts: setting up your environment, wiring up pipelines, deploying apps, and adding intelligence with AI services.
If you want an end-to-end guide to building scalable, serverless, containerized, and AI-powered solutions on Azure in 2025—with concrete scenarios like Durable Functions orchestrating long-running workflows—this book delivers.
